Ukip calls for more seats on the red benches of the House of Lords

Lord Pearson: second attempt to bolster Ukip numbers in the House of LordsSteve Parsons

Ukip has renewed its demands for greater representation in the House of Lords.

The former Ukip leader Lord Pearson of Rannoch wrote to the Cabinet Office to ask for more Ukip members to be made peers.

He said it was “transparently dishonest” for the party not to have greater representation in the upper chamber. There are currently three Ukip members on the red benches, all of whom defected from the Conservatives.

He said the case for more peers was “even stronger that it was before” after the party’s success in the European elections.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today, Lord Pearson said: “Our democracy requires that we have more than three peers in the House of Lords when we’re getting 27 per cent of the vote…